Please welcome la_peregrina

...one of the most talented poets I know.

Thoughts random and not so random.

Ohh, scary! THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what all the flinkin' fuss is about. Clearly, telling kids that staying in school and doing their best to improve themselves and (gasp!) maybe contribute positively to the future of the country they live in is far more harmful than ever I knew. 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

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Rice rations. For those of you new to the saga, it begins with the announcement that those wishing to reserve prime camping space on the list-field at October Crown were expected to provide food for forty on Saturday evening. This was subsequently clarified to be "snacks" to accompany Saturday evening partying. Whatever, it's still a fee for the privilege of pitching one's tent in certain areas.

I got to thinking about the idea of feeding forty people, and not with three jumbo bags of Doritos either. Feeding forty people for real, forty people who desperately need it, as opposed to a bunch of people who have enough disposable income to spend their weekends being medieval in a park.

That's when I began thinking about the masu/koku values used in feudal Japan. A koku represents how much rice one man could live on for a year, the masu* being the daily ration. It works out to just under a pound of uncooked rice per day. Rice runs in the neighborhood of +/- $1.00/pound, give or take. $50 would generously feed my forty feudal peasants. I, being lucky enough to have kept my job so far in this economy, am obligated to share my good fortune in the form of a donation to bayareahunger.org.

What I would like to do is pitch this as a fund-raiser at Crown, proceeds to go to the food banks. I have no qualms about spending the event with a begging bowl in hand, collecting donations.

Suggestions and criticisms welcome.

EDIT: A bit of fact checking with actual dry measures in-house confirms that the masu used for overpowering the flavor of one's sake with aromatic cedar fumes sipping sake at a sushi joint is not big enough to hold the recommended daily ration of rice, which works out to being a bit over 2 cups of uncooked rice. I thought not.